I Wondered if Minneapolis Was Bubblier than Chicago

As you may have read elsewhere, I spent the past week poking around the city on the other side of Wisconsin, Chicago. Catching up with old friends over dinner I asked how the tech startup climate was feeling.

I was surprised when the responses were lukewarm – 37Signals and Feedburner were the only two mentioned. At all. Both companies have roots at least 6 years old, so…has nothing happened since I left?

Thankfully, the answer is – at least partially – No.

TechCrunch covered the recent Tech Cocktail event and bubbles up 9 dot coms.

Even by Frank Gruber’s own admission, many of them aren’t “true companies” more like interesting projects (ChicagoCrime.org, Coastr, ExtraTasty, etc).

On the battlefront, RipIt Digital sounds like a direct competitor to our own RipShark.